William Brown House - Attic
- Rod Cofield, Executive Director
- Apr 23, 2019
- 1 min read
An important component of the William Brown House preservation project focused on repairing some deteriorating roof joists and brick work.
The image above shows how the wooden joists and framing connect to the brick walls. The wooden joists go through the bricks and then connect with some of the roof supports on the other side. The curved wooden pieces (knees) are meant to provide additional stability.
The image below shows the area where deterioration had occurred. Some of the wooden knees had essentially crumbled and a small section of brick had also fallen down. Though the issue had not reached a critical point, catching it now definitely made it an easier fix than 4-5 years from now.
To fix the attic issue, the Worcester Eisenbrandt crew first built a new wooden support frame that will stay in place. The frame is meant to provide support in case other joist/wood sections start to deteriorate in that area. It also helped hold up that part of the roof while the workers fixed the brick and wood.
Overall, it took about a week to carefully remove the bricks, clean them, fix the wooden joists, and replace the bricks and mortar.
That's a solid breakdown of the William Brown House attic repair. Interesting to see how those wooden joists were set directly into the brick walls, definitely not how things are done today. The curved knees for extra stability are a nice touch of old-school engineering. Good on the crew for catching the deterioration early before it turned into a much bigger problem. On a related note for anyone dealing with their own roofing issues, I recently came across roofers spring hill tn and was genuinely impressed with what they offer. Worth keeping in mind.